OMNI-CHANNEL SUCCESS: MYTH OR REALITY?
What a glorious age we live in—digital connections to the world at our fingertips! Businesses nowadays receive more data on customer traits and their needs and wants than they ever dreamed of having. As what happens with swift innovations, however, the data comes fast, furious and in greater volume than what traditional business intelligence systems can understand, interpret, or use to predict.
Omni-channel is the Name of the Game
In addition, customers today want a unique and personal customer experience. They research purchases before deciding where to buy and from whom. They want the ability to connect to the world of commerce when they want, where they want, and how they want. They expect businesses to reach them on multiple and mobile devices. For businesses, succeeding with today’s empowered customers means taking advantage of omni-channels.
What does omni-channel mean? In sales and marketing, the term means reaching out to customers across broad media and devices whilst maintaining consistent messaging. Omni-channel marketing increases the ability to give customers access to any businesses offerings no matter how they choose to make contact or where they are. They may shop at a kiosk, or on a website, or in a big box store, or on their smartphone. Within any single customer journey, they may and generally do, use several of these methods. As an example, they may research a product on their smartphone, buy a product online from their notebook computer as a gift, and then return it for another size or colour at a physical store. The correct personal omni-channel strategy in the digital age leads to omni-channel success for businesses.
The Big Data Challenge
In addition to adopting omni-channel marketing, companies face challenges in determining how to use the big data streams they receive as a result. They need to decide what portion of the incoming data stream is useful to them in the context of growing their customer base and keeping them coming back for repeat business. They require predictive analysis to accomplish this task. Gartner describes predictive analytics as data mining in four parts: prediction rather than description; analysis in hours, not months; analysis for business relevance; and generating business tools that are easy to use.
Specialised Staffing is a Challenge
Perhaps the biggest challenge for many companies is a staffing issue. Companies often find it difficult to secure the talent capable of working with the voluminous data from a technology standpoint. Even if they find the staff who can handle the technology, the issue becomes how to interpret the information so that the data provides insights into the acquisition and retention of more customers.
Analysing data and then predicting how to use it to structure future business decisions is a specialised field. The competition for data scientists and analysts is fierce. As an example of omni-channel marketing linking up with data interpretation and management, Siemen USA recently partnered with Accenture in the smart grid field to work together to find solutions to systems integration and data management.
However, there is another way: put data insights into the hands of business users by utilising linked data and nodal presentation. Leading edge data management solutions such as Ulysses are now harmonising disparate data sets and presenting that to users in a highly intuitive form.
Technology Innovations and How to Deal with Them
With respect to the changing technologies businesses now face, growth is phenomenal and many companies are having difficulty keeping up. As a result, businesses are increasingly needing help from firms that are innovative in the field. Handling big data without professional assistance can mean an overhaul of a firm’s internal operations so that the IT department works more closely with engineering, finance, purchasing, marketing, and other relevant departments. It means eliminating barriers to cooperation within the company thereby allowing the aggregation of data sets.
Making Omni-channel Success a Reality
When aiming for omni-channel success, businesses must be able to successfully analyse and interpret information and apply it accordingly throughout the whole customer journey. They can employ numerous data scientists; however, this setup is not feasible or even efficient for many businesses given the logistics and costs involved.
This is why third-party companies like Latize that specialise in big data harmonisation, presentation, and interpretation are important. Proper data analysis and interpretation is an integral part of the recipe for success given the loads of data omni-channel marketing produces. Latize knows that omni-channel success is achievable and can make it a reality for your company, being a leader in the big data arena and having developed its comprehensive data management platform Latize Ulysses. Ulysses analyses voluminous omni-channel data to produce key business insights relevant to every step of the customer journey, resulting in more effective and accurate strategic planning and informed marketing decision-making.
Latize helps businesses come up with the appropriate omni-channel strategy by helping them understand who their customers are as people, how and where they shop, what they look for, their purchasing habits, and what can make them repeat customers through effective data analysis and interpretation. Ulysses presents users with the answers to questions they didn’t think to ask.
